Chocolate Decade
by Orihime Maychan
Summary: After reading Haruki Murakami's "The Year of Spaghetti" (from his book Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, a collection of short stories), I felt the need to make a response. This is what someone might think after meeting a special person and encountering changes in the process, even something as simple as eating food. Rated T just to be safe.


**A/N:** I was inspired by Haruki Murakami's "Year of Spaghetti", and here is my bunch of drabbles as a response to the thoughts in that story. Please rate, review, comment, or just read. Thank you! ^-^

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**Starting the Chocolate Decade**

I never really liked chocolate. I prefer fruits. Their tastes have more variety, with just the right flavor and with the kind of sweetness that never dulls my tongue. But after I met him, and learned how much he loves the awful, brown, strong-flavored stuff, I guess I couldn't help but smile just thinking about it. I even started to appreciate the appeal of commercially-sold love-in-a-box that most people in the world would recognize and hold dear. Even now, years after his scent has been long gone, each time I see some boxes of it sold in stores, a wave of nostalgia washes over me. I still prefer fruits until now, but somehow, whenever loneliness waves its ugly hand over my heart, I longingly take small bites of that awful, bittersweet pieces of heaven, just to remember things which I have long-forgotten.

**Sweet milk-chocolate**

It melts fast. It gets stuck in my throat like badly-chewed New Year's mochi*. Sometimes confectioners put nuts in it, or dried fruit, just to hold the pieces together. But what I find weird is that once it melts, it tastes even stronger. Maybe that's why he prefers to toy with the weird, brown stuff till it covers his fingers and it runs to the palms of his hands. What's even weirder is that if he asks me to taste it, licking the runny stuff off his palms, it actually tastes even better when I eat the whole thing by myself.

**Semi-sweet Chocolate**

He said I can't eat it raw, but it needs to be cooked to activate the cacao's inherent flavors. Once it gets melted to the right temperature, it could hold its shape, which is why it can be used to cover just about anything: fruits, nuts, bacon, rice, or mochi. I guess apart from milk chocolate, I came to appreciate semi-sweet cooking chocolate since it doesn't melt fast, making it much more flexible when mixed with other ingredients. But he said that no matter what I say, some things are way sweeter than chocolate. I was a fool to believe what he said, and I guess I'm still a fool for keeping such beliefs existing in the innermost of my thoughts.

**Dark Chocolate**

It tastes like coffee. It scratches my throat, and it makes my tonsils ache. I don't like it at all. He says that's what makes dark chocolate seem the kind of treat that adults would appreciate more. My love for him didn't make me change my mind though, I didn't like bitter stuff. And I still don't like it. Well, people have various tastes, and I have no reason to hold it against them. I'll let it remain at that.

**Chocolate Milk**

I drink some when I feel so lazy to chew, but wanting to reminisce so much. It's like I get to drown my feelings, but without the hassle of a hangover. And even if I get weird tummy rumblings in the morning, I just don't care so much. It's because more often than not, emotional pains are harder to live with than physical pains. For me, at least.

**Chocolate Cake**

I only taste cakes during special occasions. This stemmed from the dumb belief that the word "special" can grow into something less than it is, if its welcome has been overly expended. So while some enjoy so many "special" things every day, I just simply choose when to celebrate anything worth "special" to begin with. I only eat chocolate cakes once a year only on the anniversary of our togetherness, and eat fruit-flavored cakes on the day of his death. Over the years, I have come to realize that I associate chocolate with his presence, and fruits to the years that he left me alone, or the time before I met him. It felt like I had living markers of the special events of my life, so before the meaning runs out to dry, I had to stop myself from indulging too much on the "special" stuff, before I forget why I eat such stuff in the first place.

**The Day I Decided to Ditch Chocolate Altogether**

I finally realized that he's never coming back to me, but for some weird reason I still keep eating chocolate in certain times of the year. Like his birthday, my birthday, our anniversary, and even on the day of his death. But after a decade of pain, my heart has been numbed so much, and I ditched the idea of eating something that I personally didn't like, if not for someone's influence. No, it's not like I'm trying to erase his memories. I guess I just felt that I needed to move on, but I can't. Is it because I have been changed, that his coming and going in my life caused so many changes that even I don't where to begin looking? If that is indeed the case, then I guess it was true, that people can come into your life and leave you, but those you cared for so much can turn you into a person much more different, if not a better one than you once was. If it happened to me, then it is most certain that other people have experienced it too, and you are no exception to that.

**-END-**


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